Sounds of Silence
by LadyofDodge
Summary: A brilliant flash of lightning cut through the dark sky, illuminating the street and sending Louie Pheeters scurrying toward the figure sprawled across the horse's back. "Oh, my goodness, Marshal, we're going to need some assistance here. You hang on real tight. I'll be right back."


**Sounds of Silence**

 **Note: This short story grew out of a writing challenge for one of the groups I belong to. The "challenge" was to use the following ten words, in no particular order, in a story:** **saddle, gift, dust, festive, ribbon, cantankerous, desire, candle, hearty, tumbleweeds.**

A lone horse picked his slow, careful way through the cold rain that pelted the prairie and turned the dust and dirt of the Dodge City streets into a deserted morass of muck and mud. He rounded the bend at the south end of town and paused, as if uncertain which way to turn. With no familiar tug on the reins from the unconscious rider slumped precariously over his mane, the old buckskin resorted to habit and splashed his way down the block to the U.S. Marshal's Office.

How long the patient animal stood in the downpour guarding his precious cargo, no one would ever be sure. But it was Louie Pheeters, tottering home to his bed of straw at the livery stable, who spotted the horse, seemingly alone, in front of the jail. Then a brilliant flash of lightning cut through the dark sky, illuminating the street and sending Louie scurrying toward the figure sprawled across the horse's back."Oh, my goodness, Marshal, we're going to need some assistance here. You hang on real tight. I'll be right back." Louie turned and pounded hard on the door of the marshal's office. "Festus, Festus…you need to wake up! It's the Marshal…somethin' bad's happened to the Marshal!" He banged insistently on the thick wooden door, finally creating enough racket to wake the sleeping deputy.

"I gotcha, Matthew, I gotcha," the wiry hill man said softly as he grasped the giant of a man around the waist and gently eased him down from the saddle. With Louie on one side and Festus on the other, they half-dragged, half-carried the still unconscious lawman into the office and lowered him to the cot. "Help me get this soppy coat offa him, Louie," Festus instructed. "Boots, too, then go git Doc, an' tell 'im to hurry. Ol' Matthew ain't lookin' none too pert ta me."

After Louie took off at a near run for Doc's office, Festus went about the business of trying to make his boss comfortable. He used his own bandana to dry the man's wet face and removed his gun belt as well. Not knowing what else to do, he lit the stove and put the half pot of day old coffee on to boil. Then he pulled a chair next to the cot and sat down. "You ain't shot, are ya Matthew? I dint see no blood nowheres." Receiving no response, he jangled his way across the floor to the window and peered into the dark night. "I shore do wish that ol' quackety quack would hurry up an' git here." A low moan from the other side of the room drew his attention, and he crossed back to the cot, poked a grubby finger against the lawman's eyelid and lifted it. "You in there, Matthew?"

"What do you think you're doing? Get away from him!" Doc burst through the door with Louie close behind.

"I ain't hurtin' him, Doc. I was only jist doin' what I seen you do hunnerts of times."

Doc fumbled in his black bag. "Yeah, well, after you spend eight years studying to be a doctor, then maybe…just maybe...you will have earned the right to do what you've seen me do 'hunnerts' of times. Now get out of my way," he said gruffly. He elbowed the deputy to the side and applied the stethoscope to Matt's chest, giving it a long listen.

"Golly bill, I dint mean nuthin'," Festus grumbled as he moved back a step.

"Heartbeat seems strong enough, little fast, maybe, but nothing unusual." He turned to Festus, and in a kinder tone said, "Sit him up so I can listen to his lungs." He moved the instrument over the marshal's back with equal concentration and then straightened. "He has a bit of congestion, and I want to make sure it doesn't get any worse—don't want it turning into pneumonia."

"Do you know what's wrong with him, Doc?" Louie asked from the foot of the cot.

"No, Louie, I don't. But I'm not finished looking yet. Bring that lamp over here so I can see what I'm doing."

Louie carried the oil lamp from the desk to the side of the cot and stood holding it in unsteady hands while Doc felt Matt's ribs and stomach. "He doesn't seem to be in any pain, so I don't think he has any broken bones, but let's see…" He continued to examine the unconscious man, moving his hands with gentle expertise over the long body. He opened the torn red shirt and extracted the long shirt tail, revealing a series of fresh bruises and abrasions across the massive chest. "Help me get this shirt off, Festus." With the shirt removed, all three men could clearly see a bruise in the middle of Matt's back, a bruise that appeared to have been made by a heavy boot.

Louie's hands shook even harder. "Oh, my goodness," he breathed.

"Looks like someone done beat and kicked him," was Festus' comment.

"That's exactly what it looks like to me," Doc agreed. Ignoring the scrape on Matt's face, he turned his attention to his head. Again, gentle hands probed the lawman's scalp, finally touching a large knot just above the left temple. "Aaha. Here we go."

"Whut is it, Doc?"

"Most likely a hematoma."

"Hunh?"

"A bad bruise. He must have hit his head on something."

"Or someone done kicked him in the head, too."

"Maybe he can tell us later, but right now it doesn't matter how it got there. I want to try to get that swelling down." Doc turned to Festus and ticked his head toward the door that led to the jail cells. "You have any guests back there?"

"Jist one. Jonas caught a drifter helpin' hisself to coffee and beans from the shelves and money from the cash drawer. He ain't gonna be no trouble, though."

"Good. I'd rather not move Matt tonight. I don't want to go jostling him around in the rain and the dark, and there's nothing I can do for him in my office that I can't do right here." He looked at the deputy. "Festus, it looks like you're going to get to practice medicine tonight after all. Load up that stove with wood and get it as warm in here as you can. And keep it that way. I'm going to get a few things from my office."

He started out the door and then turned back. "Louie, you come along and help me bring a stretcher over. We can get some men to help carry Matt up to the office in the morning."

Louie stood straight and proud. "Yes, sir, Doc, it would be my most fervent desire to help the marshal."

()()()

Somewhere inside the deep fog of unconsciousness, Matt Dillon heard the voices of his friends. Doc's, a voice that could be both gruff and kindly at the same time. Festus, with his own colorful way of speaking. In the dark recesses of his mind, Matt smiled as he listened to their bickering, impossible to tell which one of those two was more cantankerous than the other. And Louie, gentle Louie, lost in his bottle, with a story no one knew. These were his friends, and he loved them all—one like the brother he had never had, another like the father he had barely known. But a voice was missing. The only voice he wanted to hear. The one voice he needed to hear.

She had always been there before, holding his hand, stroking his head, whispering quiet words of comfort, words of love. He had heard Doc say, 'we can move him in the morning.' So it must be night. Maybe she was asleep and didn't know he was back. That must be it. She would be there in the morning.

Still his wounded mind could not rest. He had been gone for a month. Maybe she had met someone else and had gone off with him. But she wouldn't do that, he assured himself. She would wait for him and tell him herself, not leave it to others to tell him that she was leaving him. She wouldn't just disappear with no explanation unless…unless she didn't have a choice. Unless she had been taken against her will. It had happened before, it could happen again. And that thought frightened him more than any of the others.

His mind screamed her name, but not so much as a sound escaped his lips. His thoughts were interrupted by the return of Louie and Doc. Louie dragging the stretcher and Doc bearing a foul-smelling salve that he slathered across the lawman's bruised and congested chest.

Already sure of the answer, Doc asked the question anyway. "He move or say anything?"

"He ain't twitched nary a whisker, Doc. Is that bad?"

Doc shook his head. "Not necessarily. Thing is, we have no idea how long he's been like this. I'd like to bring down that swelling on his head," he said as he folded a cloth filled with ice chips from the Long Branch and placed it against the lawman's temple." He turned to the slight man hovering next to the cot. "I think your work is done for the night, Louie. You go on to bed."

"Take ol' Buck with ya. And tell Moss to take good care a'him. I have a feelin' he ain't had no easy time, either."

"We gonna watch him all night, are we, Doc?"

"We are. And we're going to be quiet, too." Doc tugged at his ear. "In fact, why don't you go in the back and get some sleep?"

"I'll do 'er, Doc, so's I'll be all fresh to spell ya later." The deputy headed through the door to the cells. "You be sure'n holler fer me iffen you need my help."

"Oh, I'll holler all right. Now go."

()()()

The voices of his friends ceased, and he was once again alone within his own mind. Something tickled his face—a length of blue ribbon laced through a mass of auburn curls. He whispered something in her ear and turned her onto her back, eliciting a peal of hearty laughter that rang out across the banks of Spring Creek.

Thoughts and memories continued, scattered and rampant as tumbleweeds across the prairie. Words of his mentors. Faces of dead outlaws. And then, a long ago day in May—his birthday. With uncharacteristic shyness, she had handed him a small flat box wrapped in festive paper. _I've never done this before, Matt. It's…it's not a store bought gift, but_ _it's something I want you to have._ She had blushed _. If you want it, that is._ He lifted the lid and smiled. A thin silver key—the key to her room and, he knew, the key to her heart as well. _I'm honored, Kitty. I just hope I'm worthy of having it._ And they had sealed their bond with a gentle kiss, a kiss as delicate as a candle's flame, blowing in the wind.

()()()

The squeaky wheels of the milk wagon in the street outside told him that it was early morning. Surely she would come to him now. But she didn't. He heard the noon stage race into town, sixteen hooves pounding the ground, Jim Buck shouting to the team.

And then, at long last….the voice he had been waiting for.

"What's going on, Doc? Sam took my bags and told me I should come down here right away." Her gaze went beyond the physician standing in the doorway. "Matt! What happened to him, Doc?"

The old man shook his head. "We don't know, Kitty. Buck brought him in last night."

"Hey, Cowboy." She sat down on the edge of the cot, a soft hand gently stroking his face. "Is he going to be all right?"

Even as she asked the question, the closed eyes began to flicker, a hand reached slowly for hers, and a voice, raspy and weary, whispered a single word. "Kitty."

Doc smiled and nodded. "He is now, honey. He is now."

The End


End file.
